by Jutta Kern

Back in 1990, when the Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI) was founded, many corporations were in the midst of a public accountability crisis as far as environmental, health and safety standards were concerned. The Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984, in which about 3,800 people died immediately and several thousand more were left with permanent and partial disabilities, was still not completely settled between the US Union Carbide Corporation and the state of India. The clean-up of the once-burning Cuyahoga River in Ohio was still going on, but at that time had already sparked the Clean Water Act and the founding of state and federal Environmental Protection Agencies. On the one hand, industry had to comply with standards set by these new agencies, but on the other hand, it slowly began to recognize that, as markets diversified and customers became more and more demanding, assuming accountability for corporate behavior could also bear economic advantages.